Koh Entertains in North Korea

After acclaimed South Korean cellist Bong-Ihn Koh ’08 finished performing Isang Yun’s cello concerto in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Friday night, a crowd of 30 girls surrounded his bus—but all they could do was wave good-bye.

Because North Korean citizens aren’t allowed to interact with foreigners unless they are given special training, all they could do was wave—none approached to shake Koh’s hand or to ask for a photograph or autograph.

Koh’s visit to North Korea marked the first performance of a piece by Isang Yun, a Korean-German composer, by a joint group of North and South Korean musicians, and the first performance of Yun’s signature work—his cello concerto—in North Korea.

At the end of the performance, Yun’s 80-year-old widow, who had been crying during the performance, stumbled on-stage to congratulate Koh. The two sobbed and embraced.

“It was a wonderful moment,” Koh said in an interview yesterday.

Although the cello concerto had originally been scheduled for the second day of the three-day festival, Yun’s widow ensured that it would be the finale on the last night.

In 2006, Koh was slated to play in a nearly identical concert, but the performance was cancelled due to international unrest sparked by North Korea’s first nuclear tests.

Koh said he felt pressure to represent South Korean musicians to the North Korean orchestra as well as possible. At their first rehearsal, the day after his arrival, Koh said, the North Korean conductor insisted on three run-throughs of the concerto.

“I was really thirsty and wanted a bottle of water—but no one else was drinking water,” he said. “I didn’t want it to seem like I was a weak South Korean.”

Right before the concert, Koh visited the Isang Yun memorial museum in Pyongyang. He said that the inspiration helped contribute to his performance.

He added that he was also impressed with the North Korean musicians.

“I was impressed by their natural style of musical expression,” he said, noting that he never felt the need to tone down his own expressiveness.

“I felt like I was playing with the Berlin Philharmonic because the orchestra was so incredible,” Koh said.

The Isang Yun concert hall where he performed is an exact replica of the Berlin Philharmonic’s concert hall. In fact, it has slightly better acoustics Koh noted.

Although the North Koreans’ musical instruments were in poor condition, Koh said that the musicians exceeded his expectations tenfold.

“Their technical expertise is just off the charts,” he said. “I found the perfection of the performances to be both awe-inspiring and a little scary.”

Koh was able to interact only with members of the orchestra who had been “trained” to meet foreigners and trusted to go abroad—mostly the first chairs.

Even though Korea was partitioned into two countries over 60 years ago, Koh said that he sometimes had trouble understanding the conductor, who would sometimes use “a North Korean word.”

Throughout his time in North Korea, Koh—who is working at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and finishing his masters degree at the New England Conservatory—was given VIP treatment.

North Korea’s Isang Yun Institute and South Korea’s Isang Yun Peace Foundation paid for Koh’s entire trip including the plane ticket, the room in a first-class hotel overlooking Pyongyang, the tours, and the nightly banquets.

But according to Gou Young Koh—Bong-Ihn’s father, who also attended the concert—North Korean newspapers played down Koh’s historic role in the 27th annual Isang Yun festival.

“They talked lots about the music event, but they didn’t talk a lot about Bong-Ihn,” he said in an interview from South Korea, “because Bong-Ihn came from America, and they didn’t want to talk about America.”

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.